Eyes opening during slaughter? GRAPHIC

[AgroUrica]

I guess I've killed a few thousand Cornish X's in the last 6 months. It's never easy but the stress does lessen with time.

One thing I've started doing before dropping them in the cone is to rest the bird's breast on the edge of the counter in front of the cones. The bird's legs are held firmly and after a few moments they calm down quite a bit. Without warning, I then whack them sharply on the back of the head with a short, stout stick. Most flap their wings a bit as I drop them in the cone, some hardly move at all.......but one thing's for certain......all of them are in another world as they go into the cone. As the head pops through I slice the jugular and let them bleed out.

For me, it's a more humane way of dispatching the birds as I suspect placing them in the cone when they're fully conscience is probably a quite frightening experience.

 

[SunnySkies]

I'm a veterinarian, and I have euthanized many different animals over the course of my career. Several times, I have had dogs and cats sit up and look at us after administration of the fatal injection, and one did it after I had declared the pet dead! That one scared the heck out of the staff member assisting me and the owner. I had only been out of school for perhaps a few months, my boss was out of town on his first vacation in years, and I was at a loss for words then. Not so much now. These responses are secondary to the most primitive parts of the brain, the last parts to die, saying move, breathe, you are dying, which triggers their eyes opening, the dog sitting up, feet and legs twitching, whatever you observe. it does not mean they are conscious; to the contrary, the conscious part of the brain is gone by then.

If you have completely decapitated them, it's the final electrical impulses left in the body.

I killed two roosters recently, aggressive ones, and it was still disturbing. Even with all my experience, killing an animal for any purpose should not be an easy thing but done with respect for that animal's life.